Chi is yours, and only yours
Chi is a personal spirit. Every person has one, and it stays with them from the cradle to the grave as a guardian and a spiritual double. Chinua Achebe put it more sharply: the human being is only one half of a person, and the weaker half.
The word can also mean God. But in names and proverbs it’s usually the personal one: the divine particle in a person, by which they share in the Supreme Being. That’s why the same word carries a sense of destiny, of fortune, and of the share of life you were handed.
Chi is about fortune rather than character. A person with a bad chi is unlucky, not wicked. The phrase is ajọ chi, a bad chi.
When a chi is received is told two ways. Some say at conception; Achebe describes a bargain before a person comes into the world, at which the chi presides over the gifts and the course of life they’re given.
Chukwu is chi made great
Chukwu, the supreme creator, is that same word compounded: chi plus ukwu, great. The Great Chi. Chi isn’t to be confused with Chukwu; the one is yours, the other is everyone's.
So a name starting Chi- and a name starting Chukwu- aren’t two unrelated families of name. One speaks of the spirit that belongs to this child and the other of the source that created it, and many families use the two as a pair: Chiemeka and Chukwuemeka are the same name.
What the names are saying
Once you know the word, the names read as plain sentences rather than sounds. The glosses below follow Nkọwa okwu and the Williamson dictionary.
- Chidi: chi exists. God lives.
- Chioma: a good chi, which is also to say good fortune.
- Chinedu: chi leads.
- Chinyere: chi gave.
- Chukwuemeka: Chukwu has done well.
More names that carry chi
Achebe wrote that if you want to know how life has treated an Igbo man, a good place to look is the names his children bear. His own list includes these.
- Chika: chi is supreme.
- Chibuzo: chi is in front.
- Nebechi: look to chi.
- Chijioke: chi holds the share, the dealer of gifts.
- Chiebonam: may chi not accuse me.
The proverb behind it
There’s a line that explains the whole arrangement: onye kwe, chi ya ekwe. If a person agrees, their chi agrees. In Onitsha you’ll hear it as onye kwe chie ekwe.
It says a life isn’t simply handed down. What you were given and what you do with it are both part of it, and neither one settles the matter alone. The course chosen before birth can be improved on through effort, prayer and a good life.
The proverb has a counterweight. Of the man who says yes and still fails, people say chie ekwero: his chi doesn’t agree. And of children of the same mother who turn out differently: ofu nne n'amu, ma ofu chi adeke. One mother gives birth, but not the same chi creates.
A child given one of these names is being told all of that from the day they’re named.